1178 -- "The moon split in two ... a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out fire, hot coals & sparks ... the body of the moon writhed, as it were, in anxiety": a meteor collision results in a violent explosion on the moon, so creating the Giordano Bruno crater. Source: [Calendar Riots]

1746 -- Amazon.com?: A group of London booksellers enters into a contract with Samuel Johnson for the projected 40,000-word Johnson Dictionary for 1,575 pounds. Heavy, man. http://www.samueljohnson.com/

1812 -- Ivan Gontsharov lives (1812-1891). Russian writer, best known for his humorous novel Oblomov, a story of a Russian Hamlet with great dreams of progress but actually doing nothing. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ivangont.htm

1812 -- US: Congress passes declaration of war against England to protect "seamen's rights & free trade." Expansionists coveted British Canada and Spanish Florida & wanted to use British provocations as a pretext to seize both areas. Hostilities begin with a US attempt to conquer Canada. British Navy invades & sacks the new American capital at Washington, DC, sending Dolly & James Madison scurrying. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812

"We do not claim to rank among the military novelists. Our place is with the non-combatants. When the decks are cleared for action we go below & wait meekly. We should only be in the way of the manoeuvres that the gallant fellows are performing overhead."

1875 -- Russia: By the middle of this year more political prisoners had been arrested & the fortress was becoming filled. The silence that had existed when Peter Kropotkin first arrived at the prison was now broken. The prisoners eventually worked out a system of communication through knocking.

About this time Peter received an unexpected visitor. One afternoon Grand Prince Nikolai Nikolaevich, the brother of the czar, entered Peter's cell totally unannounced. This was an unprecedented action. The Grand Prince had come to meet Peter in an attempt to understand why a man of such noble status would become involved in a revolutionary movement. The meeting did not go well as each man disliked the other, & felt the other was a danger to society. The Grand Prince left the cell without further understanding of Peter's reasoning.

By the end of this year, Peter was beginning to lose hope. The interrogations had continued, & the police resorted to all sorts of means to attempt to get Peter to confess. At this time, his health was beginning to deteriorate. The damp, warm conditions of his cell had led to Peter contracting rheumatism. In December, the Ministry of Justice ordered that Peter be moved to the St. Petersburg House of Detention since his trial was nearing. Peter had spent 21 months in the Peter & Paul Fortress.

1891 -- US: Emma Goldman addresses a mass meeting to protest the second imprisonment of Johann Most at Blackwell's Island after the Supreme Court rejects the appeal of his 1887 conviction for illegal assembly & incitement to riot following the Haymarket executions.

1898 -- The New York Times critic says George Bernard Shaw's career has no promise, describing him as a "voluble Jack-of-all-Trades . . . This carnivorous vegetarian."

"My main reason for adopting literature as a profession was that, as the author is never seen by his clients, he need not dress respectably."

1903 -- Raymond Radiguet lives (1903-1923). French writer/poet, who published his best known work, The Devil in the Flesh, at age 17. Died at 20 of typhoid. Member of Dadaist & Cubist circles, & protégé of Jean Cocteau. Published in avant garde reviews. Count Orgel Opens the Ball was his last novel.

"Originality consists in trying to be like everybody else — & failing."

Active in the Spanish underground 1945-1947. Anarquista & founder of the Ruedo Ibérico publishing house in 1961, of which he was the undisputed heart & to which he devoted most of his life for the next 25 years. Committed suicide in Madrid, March 12, 1986.

The man that was shot had just won the State Attorney General race, & his name was Albert L. Patterson.

The man accused of the shooting was Albert Fuller. Fuller was the chief deputy not the Sheriff.

To update this, new evidence has been brought forward to the District attorney showing that the witnesses to this murder at the trial in 1955 in Birmingham, Al had been bought by John Patterson, the murdered man's son who was, by the way, elected Attorney General in 1954 & a resident of the state of Georgia. This was illegal by the Constitution of Alabama 1901, which reads that a man qualifying to run for Att. or Gov. must be a resident for not less than five years.

The democratically elected Arbenz, whose government made the mistake of nationalizing United Fruit Company's property, fled to the Mexican Embassy. With its success in Guatemala, the CIA had the confidence that it could now take on anyone who interfered with American "interests."

Oh the companies keep a sharp eye
And pay their respects to the army
To watch for the hot-blooded leaders
And be prepared for the junta to
crush them like flies.

Federal, state & local undercover agents added to the uniformed police force total at least as many as the delegates in attendance, some 1,500.

The organization splits into at least two factions—the Progressive Labor Party & the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM).

The confrontation between Progressive Labor (PLP) & the SDS national office under the leadership of Bernardine Dohrn brings down the whole organization. The Dohrn group brings the document "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows" to attempt to thwart the ideological pressures brought by PLP. In two days, Dohrn & her group, the Weathermen, march out of SDS forever.

1984 -- England: On the 100th day of the strike, more than two hundred miners stone Maltby police station. Source: [Calendar Riots]

1985 -- Japan: Brokerage chairman Kazuo Nugano, suspected of defrauding investors of millions, hacked to death by two men with bayonets in front of a crowd of journalists who make no move to interfere, Osaka.

1987 -- Crue Cut? A woman sues Motley Crue for $5,000 claiming that she lost her hearing because a Crue concert was too loud.

Governments of leading industrialised states are to use a detailed police dossier to prevent key organisers from entering countries hosting future meetings.

"Everybody their own Football?"

After three days of rioting in Sweden's second city, ringleaders are likely to be treated like football hooligans — & kept at home.

Ironically, many leading EU politicians, including Mr Straw & Peter Hain, are veterans of student protests though without the extremist links admitted by both Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, & Lionel Jospin, the French prime minister.

Anti-American protesters gathered outside of Bush's hotel in Gothenburg, Sweden late last week for the mass-mooning.

One report from Europe captured the protest: "At precisely 4.08pm, amid smirks & bemused giggles from a row of watching policemen, a small brass band burst into sound & gave the signal for about 2,000 naked buttocks to be pointed in the direction of the SAS Radisson hotel....

Bush laughed off the incident, claim White House insiders, but at least one official traveling with the president had a furious reaction to the insulting act."

2003 -- Finland: Iraqgate topples Jaeaetteenmaeki's centre-left government, inaugurated on April 17. Finland's first govmint to be led by a woman, lasted only 63 days. Her government falls amid claims she lied to parliament about her use of leaked secret government documents, becoming the first ever prime minister to resign amid a scandal. Transparency & openness are highly regarded in a country which consistently tops the list of least corrupt nations.

2010 -- José Saramago dies, Canary Islands. Portuguese writer gets Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. The Nobel committee praised his "parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony", and his "modern scepticism" about official truths. Originally trained as a car mechanic, his first publishing success came at age 60.